Question regarding "memory issues"

[acfreeman99]

Hi All,

There have been a few posts recently discussing potential "memory issues" on certain routes or scenarios - now, this will seem like a dumb question to you techies out there, but which memory are we talking about.....RAM, Graphics Card? I have a 4.2Ghx Processor, GTX 960 and 8GB RAM, runs TS2017 fine at maximum settings but I do get crashes and dumps from time to time - if I fly around in the Editor on Slancs for any length of time I know for sure that selecting the 2D Map will cause an immediate crash/dump so have to remember to save before even trying. On one of Nick's routes, admittedly very large, I could not even load one location into the scenario Editor....immediate dump.

So for me, and others, experiencing "memory issues" would the solution be to increase the amount of RAM or to install a Graphics Card with more memory......or other solution?

thanks,

Andy

[davep]

Have you got a lot of routes and/or scenarios?

If yes, try one of various methods of splitting them up.

I, for myself, now keep all routes in a separate folder, and copy the route
I want to play into the *proper* Routes folder. And save it back when I'm
done, of course. No crashes, dumps etc. now, and TS loads much quicker.

[acfreeman99]

Have you got a lot of routes and/or scenarios?

If yes, try one of various methods of splitting them up.

I, for myself, now keep all routes in a separate folder, and copy the route
I want to play into the *proper* Routes folder. And save it back when I'm
done, of course. No crashes, dumps etc. now, and TS loads much quicker.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "a lot" - I've got 51 Route Folders in my Routes Folder......could quite easily move some to my backup SSD.

Andy

[J0hnG]

Hello Andy,

I believe the problem is that TS2017 is a 32bit program.
That means that it can only "see" a maximum of 4 gigabytes of your computer's RAM.

Everything that you see on screen must be loaded into this RAM before being handed to your graphics card to display.

It doesn't matter if your computer has 8, 16 or 32 gigabytes of RAM, TS2017 will only ever see that small 4 gigabyte chunk.

That becomes a problem when you have factors like:

* Lots of scenery on your route.
* The scenario is long.
* The scenario uses a lot of AI traffic.
* Lots of diverse locos, carriages and wagons.

Lowering the scenery detail helps somewhat because it stops TS2017 from loading some of the models into memory.

The answer would be to develop a 64 bit version of TS2017. But that's very unlikely to happen as DT are starting afresh with Train Sim World.

As for swapping out routes, this was something that you had to do with Microsoft Train Sim due to the way it handled routes.
I don't believe there's any benefit in do this in TS2017, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

My route count is currently at 94 and I don't often have problems.

Hope that helps!

[acfreeman99]

Hello Andy,

I believe the problem is that TS2017 is a 32bit program.
That means that it can only "see" a maximum of 4 gigabytes of your computer's RAM.

Everything that you see on screen must be loaded into this RAM before being handed to your graphics card to display.

It doesn't matter if your computer has 8, 16 or 32 gigabytes of RAM, TS2017 will only ever see that small 4 gigabyte chunk.

That becomes a problem when you have factors like:

* Lots of scenery on your route.
* The scenario is long.
* The scenario uses a lot of AI traffic.
* Lots of diverse locos, carriages and wagons.

Lowering the scenery detail helps somewhat because it stops TS2017 from loading some of the models into memory.

The answer would be to develop a 64 bit version of TS2017. But that's very unlikely to happen as DT are starting afresh with Train Sim World.

As for swapping out routes, this was something that you had to do with Microsoft Train Sim due to the way it handled routes.
I don't believe there's any benefit in do this in TS2017, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

My route count is currently at 94 and I don't often have problems.

Hope that helps!

Thanks......very helpful.

Andy

[gptech]

which memory are we talking about.....RAM, Graphics Card? I have a 4.2Ghx Processor, GTX 960 and 8GB RAM

TS, like all 32bit applications, can't use more than (approx.) 4GB of RAM.
If you were running short of system RAM, Windows would let you know and if you ignored the advice to free up resources eventually the whole system would crash.

Going by that then, you should never have memory problems as you've more than TS can ever use...

This is where we look at the VAS (Virtual Address Space) and how Windows uses disk space as a surrogate *memory* location.
TS is able to access 4GB of VAS, if that gets *full* or too fragmented then the game will/can fall over but the rest of the system is unaffected.
Windows will use free disc space as 'somewhere to stick temporary stuff', so a shortage of HDD space can throw up error messages that seem to be related to memory---these often have 'Vertex Buffer' mentioned in the error message, implying a graphics memory problem. A shortage of free disc space on the system drive can/will throw up these errors---there's no hard and fast figure saying how much free space you should have, but for background tasks to run properly (defrag for example) you need 15% of the drive free.
Check your C\: for free space if you get an inordinate number of these errors.
In editor mode, there's more going on than just loading the route and assets, as a log of actions is kept so that you can undo an action so crashes/freezes are much more common. Remembering to save, or even save, exit, reload when editing is about the best you can do.


51 routes shouldn't be too many, unless of course the foundations you're building on are shaky---fragmented HDD, not enough free space--and there's no conclusive evidence to put the root cause of issues at the door of the routes folder. Granted, thinning that out can alleviate the issue, but think of it as treating the symptoms rather than the disease.

[peterfhayes]

Andy
As GPT says this is NOTHING to do with system RAM but definitely to do with the VAS.
The editor in TS 2017 in particular loads a lot of data into the OS/VAS but doesn't always pass it on to the cpu/RAM working set (there may be no instruction to do so). However using the editor code the cpu/RAM tries to access this data but it is not where it should be. This generates hard page faults (not really faults per se), memory mismatch and the typical Cx0000005 error. Because of the way that the editor works it fragments the VAS (maximum 4GB for ANY 32-bit app running in a 64-bit OS - minus a small amount of video ram) and also depletes the contiguous VAS space that the TS editor can load into. Now even if TS editor needs just 1MB of contiguous space at a particular address and its not there = CRASH.

Mow if you look at TSW posts there are minimal reports of TSW crashing due to the VAS and that is because TSW can address up to 8 TERABYTES of VAs as can Windows 64-bit.
pH

[johnrossetti]

It’s interesting that there are currently two threads on memory.
The effect I get when I think I have memory problems is when AI goes past showing the couplings only. Mainly on the big routes.
I haven’t seen this effect for quite a long time but since the last update of Railworks.exe to v59.2a last month I’ve seen the problem return. Quiet a lot too.
We are never really sure what changes are made to the main file, probably for good commercial reasons but if enough of us report these problems, suppliers soon identify any changes that might cause these problems.
Cheers John

[acfreeman99]

Thanks for all of the interesting and useful responses - I run Steam on an SSD, not a great deal of space left on it but does not seem to be at an alarming level.......but from the above responses it may be that freeing up some space could be worth a try - I have Ship Simulator, and some missions, installed and I very rarely use it.....I could move that to my USB SSD backup which should free up a fair bit of space, will give that a try....nothing to lose.

Andy

[gptech]

I run Steam on an SSD

Is Windows on that drive too Andy?

[acfreeman99]

I run Steam on an SSD

Is Windows on that drive too Andy?

No Gary......just the full Steam Directory containing TS2017 and Ship Simulator.

Andy

[acfreeman99]

So, SSE was not as big as I thought ( just under 4GB ) but my SSD now shows 19.5 GB free of 119 GB

Andy